An appropriate burial

November 14 is one of those dates that sticks out to me every time I come across it. It’s not like my birthday, but it never fails to remind me of the Marshall University football team plane crash in 1970.

My dad had been athletic director at Marshall until January 1, 1970. He left under the taint of a scandal he was entirely innocent of, though he was involved. The way I heard the story, EO came down to Marshall from its big brother rival West Virginia University in 1967 at the age of 36, then the youngest major college athletic director ever. Not long after arriving, he became aware of an illegal recruiting fund, and tried to put the kibosh on it, much to the chagrin of the funders and coaches involved, no doubt.

But the recruiting continued. Eventually the football and basketball coaches were fired, Marshall was kicked out of the Mid-American conference, and sanctioned by the NCAA. EO left in the furor that followed, and never worked in college sports again.

So I can’t imagine what he felt when he heard that the plane carrying 75 Marshall players, coaches, fans and crew went down about a  mile from Tri-State Airport in the rain the evening of November 14, 1970. These were his recent colleagues, kids he knew on the team, coaches and supporters he’d known, and his two best friends Mike Prestera and Gene Morehouse. I remember EO saying he identified some of the bodies; my mother told me recently they went to 16 funerals.

For me that night was a defining one of my childhood. I was eight years old, and I was terrified: my friends’ parents were on that plane, I had played on the fields during team practices while my dad was at work there. I remember sitting under the phone table talking to my friend Steve, just repeating the news we had heard. Apparently I told my Sunday school teacher the next day that I was the luckiest boy in the world because my dad wasn’t on that plane.

EO was buried at the memorial for Marshall crash, as we tend to call it, at Spring Hill Cemetery in Huntington, West Virginia. He’s next to Nate Ruffin, who was not on that plane because he was injured, and who died of cancer in 2001. He’s in the front row, something he would have loved. When the leaves are down in the fall, you can see the football stadium from the site.

The memorial at Spring Hill Cemetery in
Huntington, WV lists all the passengers and crew
on the plane that night. EO is buried just to
 the right of the memorial from this view.

I had no idea he wanted to be buried there. I’d never talked to him about it. He and Betty had made lots of plans for their funerals, but had not purchased a plot, but sure enough, there were several available there near the memorial itself. Players from opposing teams visit the memorial, and the week before EO died, the Marshall football team had run up the hill to visit it. When we were there looking at the plot, a woman drove up whose brother had been one of the six unidentified players. Folks will visit, and they’ll see EO’s name among the headstones.

I had never been to the memorial before that day, I don’t think. I was all around that area. The cemeteries in Huntington are owned by the park board, and we treated Spring Hill a little like a park. I remember jumping off a hillside into huge piles of leaves gathered from the cemetery’s 110 acres. And even though I remain friends with at least one person who lost his parents, I rarely think of that when I see or talk to him. When I talk about him, or when I write November 14, or when lots of other things remind me of the Marshall crash, the memories of that night return.

Two men my age who lost their parents came to EO’s visitation. Both of them live near the memorial, both walk their dogs in the cemetery. Both talked about EO keeping up with them, encouraging them, spreading the news of their successes. There are others who would say the same thing. Now they have their PR guy out there at the cemetery.

Now that EO is buried there, and Betty’s ashes will be buried there when she dies, I will of course visit much more often. It will become a marker of a time that was so much a part of my childhood that I didn’t think about it very often, and I think about it all the time.

Week Five, ending July 1

Week Five, ending July 1

Tue 6/26  4 miles, including two miles barefoot. I ran to the practice fields, which were closed--I’m always a little afraid to cross yellow tape, mostly for fear of pesticides they no doubt use. I ran on the game field, a really nice fake turf that was a little more slippery, at least in my socks, than I thought it would be. 

Fri 6/29  6 miles at Croft with Mackay and Carroll.  I felt like crap at 6 am, but was glad to run with two of my favorite people.

Running and talking with Mackay, November 2011

from Southside: Southside Loop clockwise to Centerline 

With high temperatures around 104 degrees, and about 75 in the morning (not so bad, really), I opted not to run at all over the weekend. Saturday, I did some yard work (I have a yard?), and hunkered down in the later afternoon. Sunday we went to visit Q at camp in Greenville, and had lunch with a boy growing to be a man. 

This is exactly what the rest in the summer is meant for, when it’s hot and humid and draining. I’m banking on the rest now allowing for the hard training of the winter and spring. 

June totals  65 1/2 miles in 14 runs (14/16)

Year-to-date:  919 miles in 145 runs

Given the circumstances, none of this matters at all. And it can’t stay this hot all summer, can it?

Weeks Three and Four: Into Summer Rest

Mon 6/11 2 miles
Tue 6/12 2 miles

Wed 6/13 2 miles in Huntington, West Virginia, my home town, at the beautiful Ritter Park.

Thu 6/14  After the strangest evening of my life, any thought of running Highlands Sky disappeared. EO's diagnosis was grim: severe brain damage from lack of oxygen. He was unresponsive, breathing on a respirator, but my brother John, my mother, Christy and I hung out with him all day, joined by my sister in the late afternoon. We talked, and laughed, and cried, and we included him in all of it. We all became closer.

Hospital Rock Trail February 2011
It's covered in briars in the summer.

Sun 6/18  10 ½ miles in Huntington. A really nice run with my big brother through some of our old spots. Kevin told me he had done this run starting in 1977 when he ran 10 miles a day, same loop, no idea what he was doing. We ran the two and a half miles of crushed stone trail to the west end, then through Harvey Town and across Fifth Street to the back access to the Huntington Art Museum.  The climb to the museum—Mount Futhermucker, we fondly call it—is a brute. Added in a little 1930s neighborhood and a tour of the park. Nice to see two old men go at it.

Christy and I drove home to Spartanburg to pick up L and Q, and their cousin at camp, to come back to Huntington for the funeral. 

Total  16 ½ miles in four runs

Sat 6/23  9 ½ miles at Jones Gap. This run should be counted in time—2:27. What a brute of a run. Jones Gap never fails to remind me how tough it is. About 2000 feet of climbing in the first three or four miles, then brutal and difficult downhill. Two waterfalls and some great views later, I ran back to the car by the road.

Falls Creek Falls Trail to Hospital Rock Trail. Returned by Jones Gap Road.

Sun 6/24  5 miles at Croft. First hot-hot-hot run. Bristol and I stopped in the creek twice for some sitting.

from Dairy Ridge: New Edition to cut-off over to Palmetto

Total 14 ½ miles in 2 runs

One of my first concessions to age was taking a couple of months every year to run with little focus. It started in my late thirties when I lived in the mountains in southern California. The winter snow limited trail access near my house, so I turned back mileage and intensity until things started to melt in early March.  Teacher vacation made summers training camps, with lots of outings and races.  I did that for so many years that when I stopped teaching six years ago, the habit stuck with me.

Last summer I really paid for it. The summers here in South Carolina are very hot and humid. Training in the heat with a focus on a race in late July, combined with antibiotics because of a tick bite, led to a DNF, only my third in 28 years.  Several years ago my brother told me he spent the Tennessee summers running a couple of week day runs of five or so miles, and a long run of 15-17 miles in the mountains every week. He said he was fresher than all his friends who trained hard through the summer, and came back stronger in the fall.

So there I am, in rest mode. I’ll still run far if I feel like it, and I have a couple of longer runs planned. I’ll run four or five or six or seven days a week, probably 25-40 miles a week. I’ll start back in September, and may run a 50k in October. I’d like to run faster than last year at the Camp Croft Half-Marathon in November. I’m still holding off planning for Pine Mountain in December.

EO Barrett March 16, 1931-June 15, 2012

It’s hard to know how to start.

EO died last week after choking on a piece of meat at a restaurant. C and I were with him and my mom, just visiting as we were heading to Highlands Sky and a weekend in the mountains. His airway was cut off long enough to cause severe brain damage, and he never woke up after losing consciousness in the restaurant while I and others tried to  clear his windpipe. He passed away peacefully on Friday, June 15, at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

Q and I visited in May; he was in good shape, I thought, as I thought this visit. He was moving reasonably well, he was lucid and funny. “I’m still here,” he’d say, with only a touch of sarcasm, or resignation. It  became his most recent and perhaps last EOism.

At dinner that night, we talked about the traveling my parents have done. They have visited 30 countries in the past 25 or so years, and to a whole pile of WVU and Marshall ball games. I asked if they missed it. “We have been everywhere we want to go,” EO said. “We’re content with the traveling we’ve done.” That contentment shined through all EO said that night. EO died doing what he loved: having dinner with his family. That the final meal was an 18-ounce steak cooked bloody rare was poetry. 

EO's death was at least partly brought on by one of the most insidious symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Dysphagia, a weakening of the swallowing muscles, comes toward the end of the lives of Parkinson’s patients. The difficulty swallowing is compounded by a weak epiglottis, my mother told me, which increases the possibility of just about anything swallowed going into the lungs. It also weakens the ability to cough.  Dysphagia is at the root of aspiration pneumonia, the number one cause of death among Parkinson’s patients. EO had double pneumonia after his heart attack this spring, and came through that episode pretty well. But we knew from the diagnosis that this was not a battle EO would win.

EO was a human being, but he was a damn good one. He tried hard at everything, and strove for what was right with unwavering integrity. He used most of what he spent to provide experiences for his children and grandchildren and allowing my mother to work with those who had no money, he might say. He loved knowing people, and worked a room like you wouldn’t believe. He wore a name tag, for Pete’s sake. He was funny, and bright, and shared what he knew with profligacy. He did everything he could to improve the lot of others--the athletes he promoted, the employees of the bottling plant he managed, his beloved teachers and their retirement savings, and most of all his children and grandchildren.

Someone asked me if I would continue my training now. Of course my quest continues--EO would want it that way. My efforts will help discover better treatments for symptoms like dysphagia, and to find a cure for Parkinson’s. Your donations to Team Fox, which benefits the Michael J. Fox Foundation, will help fund those quests. We knew the research being done now would not help EO; it helps the next EO, and the next.   

Read more about EO's life here, and here, and here.

Week Two: Tapering for Highlands Sky

Mon 6/4 Off

Tue 6/5  Off. First time all year I have taken three days off in a row. I’ll also say that these were three smart days off. My toe has been sore, and swollen. I’ve been icing and resting.

Wed 6/6  5 miles on Cottonwood

Thu 6/7 3 miles

Fri 6/8  7 miles at Croft. I felt pretty crappy until I realized that it wasn’t getting worse or better. Then I felt fine.

from Dairy Ridge: New Edition to Palmetto

Sat 6/9 Off. I realized that running today would make no positive difference, and could harm my toe.

Sun 6/10  13 miles at Croft. A great run with 5 or so miles of new trail that we’ve been meaning to get to. Carroll out for the first time in a while, and for the first time in even longer, Gordon, Carroll, Seth and I all ran together. Felt great passing easy miles.

from the riding ring: Foster Mill to the boy scout hut to the lake trail to New Edition out to the road and over to Garry Perry back to the riding ring

I’m nervous about next week’s run. Forty miles is one thing, 9 1/2 hours is another. I haven’t had the strong lead up I did to Terrapin. I’ll take it as it comes, and focus on drinking and eating enough during the race.

Total  28 miles in four runs

Seems appropriate somehow...

49 Weeks to 50 Miles at 50 Years

So I’ve begun. I’ll turn 50 years old in August, and next May 11--in 49 more weeks--I’ll celebrate by running the Ice Age Trail 50 mile race in Wisconsin. In the fifty weeks leading to that race, I’ll have run 2000 miles or so in training. I have other races planned, and places I want to go for runs, and most importantly, I know I’ll pass many of those miles with my closest friends. I’ll write about all of those things.

Betty and EO, April 16, 2011

If you’ve read this blog before, you know I’m raising money to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease to hour my father, EO. I’ve pledged to raise $10,000 for Team Fox, which benefits the Michael J. Fox Foundation in its efforts to find that cure. Follow this link to my personal donation page with Team Fox, and help me get to my goal. The Michael J. Fox Foundation has funded more than $289 million in Parkinson’s research, the largest private funder in this field. Their strategic investments will no doubt help find a cure within my lifetime. 

I don’t expect the same for my dad. EO was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease five years ago, though he has had symptoms for more like ten years. He and my mother deal with the loss of mobility associated with it, and with the other related health issues. For now, there is no cure for Parkinson’s; you can only treat the symptoms. Some of the “symptoms,” like the tics that many Parkinson’s patients have, are actually side effects of the drugs. 

I’m hoping to have a lot of folks in Wisconsin for my race, though I kind of doubt my dad will make it. Parkinson’s is a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder, affecting pace and agility. EO doesn’t shake, but he uses a walker. He has a hard time traveling, which hurts because he loves to travel. But he has a hard time even walking down the block, made worse because, as my mother says in all seriousness, he can’t walk and talk at the same time. 

Now my dad can talk, and his encyclopedic memory leaves him with more stories than you can shake a stick at, as he might say. So he’ll stop and tell his story. We’ve heard them all before, but lately I’ve paid special attention to them. I can see him looking through them all as he tries to find the details he wants, his mind sharp, but his voicing of the stories slowed by the disease. Coordinating all of the things he needs to do just to walk down the hall has become complicated, and he tires quickly.

EO can dance, too. He and my mother Betty have been dancing regularly for several years. They've gotten pretty good, and get a lot of attention wherever they dance. Betty told me they get special acclaim now when EO gets his walker to get off the dance floor. 

Mount Pisgah, North Carolina
 April 28, 2012

I also have a personal reason for wanting to raise money: the disease runs in my family, and even though there is no apparent inherited risk, it does seem to affect families. My dad says his father had Parkinson’s, and we suspect that my great-grandfather did, too. My dad’s sister had a form of Parkinson’s. I think about it often, especially as I exercise my mobility for hours on end.  

I hope you’ll follow my quest. I’ll post stories of my training here, and also post about turning fifty, and about my dad and mom’s journeys, and if I’m lucky, there will be guest posts by my family. 

I want this fifty weeks to fifty miles at fifty years to make more a difference in the larger world. I want put my selfish running habit to good use. I’m asking you to donate to the Michael J. Fox Foundation by following this link to my donation page. All of the $10,000 I raise will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and all donations are tax-deductible. 

You can also help by becoming a follower of my blog because I’ll be asking for some corporate support from the companies whose gear I use.

Please take this time to donate.

Week One: Week ending June 3

Mon 5/28  3 miles

Tue 5/29  Not a lick of time as I prepared to go out of town for work.

Wed 5/30 5 miles in Chapel Hill, NC. In town for a conference, staying on the UNC campus. Just down the street from the hotel is a greenway built along the sewer right-of-way, and a pile of attendant trails that loop around in the woods.

Thu 5/31  AM 2 1/2 miles. A nice little loop through Carrboro with some folks at the conference.

PM  4 1/2 miles on the greenway trails.  It’s been a long time since I ran twice in a day. I knew the early run would be short, and I thought it would be a good way to get to see more of Chapel Hill. 


May totals: 172 1/2 miles in 25 runs
Year to date: 853 1/2 miles in 131 runs

Fri 6/1  2 1/2 miles around the UNC campus with my buddy Tim, who’s doing an Ironman in Coeur d’Helene, Idaho in a couple of weeks. 

Sat 6/2  14 miles at Croft with Gordon.  Still working on the general nutrition. Gordon’s recommendation: more whole grains, like oatmeal, for breakfast. In my late-run fatigue, I stubbed my toe pretty hard on a rock and fell. My toe is very sore, which worries me. I have to remember that I won’t add any fitness in the next couple of weeks anyway. 

from Dairy Ridge: Palmetto to TC’s to the Lake Trail to New Edition

Sun 6/3  I had hoped to run another two+ hours today, but my toe is tender, especially when I push off and when I turn. I don’t want to aggravate it, and am a little worried, to tell the truth. I’ve been icing it all day, and figure I’ll have an easy  two weeks leading to the race. I’m focusing on eating well, and enough. 

Total: 31 1/2 miles in 6 runs


This is also the end of the first of fifty weeks leading to the Ice Age 50 next May 11.